Worried About Global Warming? DON’T Buy An Electric Vehicle I feel it is safe to assume that people who buy electric cars do so because they feel that doing so will help protect environmental quality and slow climate change. Is that really the case? Based on the 2015 Paris Agreement, there will need to be a 50-fold increase in electric vehicles worldwide. With current technology, that means a huge increase in the use of lithium-ion batteries. Their manufacture uses natural…
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Opinion - Page 263
With New Inspection In Hand, City Attorney Due Back In Court Editor’s Note: Here the summary of findings of an inspection of the former Oneonta Hotel conducted by code inspectors on Jan. 15. The city Board of Public Service declare an “emergency” at the building on Jan. 5, 2017, after an inspection. On Oct. 5, 2017, the board declared the apartment house “unsafe.” With the latest finding, City Attorney David Merzig is due back in county court, seeking an…
Ban Straws? If You Want To Recycle More Plastic, Focus On Worst Abuser To the Editor: Let me weigh in on Amazon, Cuomo, the environment, and ignorance. First Amazon. Fourth-richest company in the world. Recent announcement of expansion in New York, thanks to the governor and his desire to continue to revitalize the Long Island City area which – if you have witnessed over the last 30 years – has become an extension of Manhattan. Not a bad thing perhaps, but…
Fighting For ‘Purity’ Always Preferable To The Alternatives To the Editor: Mike Zagata’s (Jan. 10) “Renewable’s Not Ready To Replace Gas” is a prime example of “Reductio ad Absurdum”…treating a vital but complex issue as if it were all or nothing. Until we reach heaven, nothing is 100-percent pure, and informed advocates of wind, tide, or solar power don’t say they are. But compared to fossil fuels, they are overwhelmingly less toxic. Pitting “Climate Change” in quotes, as Trump also does,…
It’s Only Sensible To Lock Our Doors – And Borders To the Editor: Where do we live? On a park bench, covered with newspaper, open to the elements with no place to call home? Some do, but not all. Most, in fact, live in a building called a house – with walls, doors and windows. Our own private place of refuge. Do we leave those doors and windows open or closed? Do those doors and windows have locks? What, or…
Posting Too-Complicated Bills Serving No Purpose To The Editor: My hospital bill from a visit of six months ago just arrived. The bill says clinic visit $32 (for walking in the door?), laboratory $31.85, then it says contractual adjustment: +$55.46. Then says insurance payment Medicare -$93.54, then it says: Sequestration write-off: -$ 1.91. That was just to use the room!! Then the next line is the doctor’s fee … on and on it goes. How am I going to understand…
Letters Renewables, Maybe Not Answer Today, Are Wave Of The Future To the Editor: Mike Zagata’s column of Jan. 10-11 expresses perspectives that are fast becoming archaic. To suggest renewables aren’t ready to replace gas is short-sighted, parochial and myopic. Of course, the 5,000 flights a day that circle the earth can’t by powered by green energy, but that’s exactly the point. Conserving them now will insure availability later. The gas and oil reserves will have to yield some day…
‘Uxurious’ Misread Fateful Visit Painted As Figure Of Fun, Susan B. Anthony Went On To Make History Editor’s Note: Here is The Freeman’s Journal Feb. 9, 1855, account – in prose and poetry – of Susan B. Anthony’s appearance in Cooperstown, to be commemorated with a State Historical Marker that has just arrived at the village’s First Presbyterian Church. The tone marks the flippant attitude in some quarters at that time. Mr. Editor: Your readers should be apprised that last…
Majority Senate Democrats Begin Shutting Out GOP Voices And so it begins. Day one of the new Democrat majority in the state Senate began, in many ways, as expected. A new leader was elected (from just outside New York City) and immediately outlined the policies the Democrats would be pursuing in the coming year. This is how a change in majority works, and I take no issue with that. However, I was deeply concerned on several fronts. I have consistently…
Editorial for January 18, 2019 Andela, Red Shed Show Entrepreneurial Mettle You may have noticed that Dec. 15 piece in the New York Times, “The Hard Truths of Trying to Save the ‘Rural’ Economy.” In it, reporter Eduardo Porter wrote: “I’ve lived most of my life in big cities. I don’t pretend to understand what it’s like to live in a small town or a family farm, or how it feels when all the jobs in a community seem to be…